Hubble and Spitzer status reports

On June 22, at 12:21 PM EDT, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) aboard Hubble temporarily suspended operations when an optical mechanism movement failed to reach its intended destination.

The HST team quickly identified the root cause which required a minor update to the COS flight software. COS was successfully brought out of suspend mode on June 23. None of this week's scheduled COS activities have been lost.

On June 23, at 12:20 PM EDT, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard Hubble suspended operations. No ACS commands were being executing at the time. A team has been formed to investigate the anomaly. ACS activities planned for this week are on hold.

The team reports that the WFC3, STIS, and COS instrument activities are proceeding as planned.

Spitzer

Engineers and scientists are continuing with testing and characterization activities for the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope warm mission, a process that began after Spitzer's cryogen ran out on May 15.

On June 15, a software patch was loaded onto the spacecraft. The patch was designed to allow scientists to control the temperature of Spitzer's infrared array camera -- the instrument that will still function during Spitzer's warm mission. Onboard tests confirmed that the patch works as expected. The camera arrays were stepped through a range of temperatures that includes the expected equilibrium temperature of the observatory.

All systems on the spacecraft are healthy and functioning normally.

Source: NASA
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